As the days slowly start to get shorter and those summer flip-flops are reluctantly replaced with boots, it’s important to remember the adventures from last summer. Where did you vacation this year? Don’t you think those fantastic summer trips deserve a special spot in your memory? How about highlighting those trips in your fall redecorating?

In Interior design: If your walls could talk we featured instructions on how to create beautiful DIY map wall paper in your own home. Using a wall map and map pins, you can mark off your favorite summer travel locations. These new fall interior decorations will forever remind you of the beach picnics and popsicles of summertime. Just remember, you still need to put on a jacket when you head outside to rake up those leaves.

Every person has a story that deserves to be told. Why not bring your story to life with a wall map? The only obstacle is that a mountain of maps is required to tell a lifetime of stories. How about positioning all of those beautiful maps on your wall as wallpaper? Tell the story of your favorite family vacation. Tell the story of your honeymoon trip. Tell the story of your semester studying abroad in college. It sounds like a great alternative to that floral wallpaper that you’ve been meaning to tear down.

The inspired room has written some helpful tips for putting map wallpaper in your home. This unique and beautiful map design will brighten up any hallway. So forget about that standard white paint because now you can tell a story with your wallpaper.

Empty wall space can put a damper on any room. Overpriced wall decorations can lead to the use of old college dorm posters to fill the space. Whether you want to add a touch of class to your walls or give the impression that you are a world traveler, a map is the perfect addition to any room.

Creative Juices has laid out a step-by-step tutorial to create one of these beautiful wall pieces. Instead of breaking the bank to frame a map, follow these simple steps and put a world map on a canvas. This DIY map decoration will have your friends clamoring to ask you where you bought it. You could easily convince them that you picked it up at Pottery Barn. They’ll never know that you spent a fraction of what they’ll pay when they rush to buy it.

Using gold leaf glue, a paint brush and a pencil, draw your design. Paint it in with glue and then place a sheet of gold leaf over the top. Lightly tap it (it might lift, but that’s okay because you can fill the holes in later) and then give it a second before lifting the edges up. Your design will pretty much be laid in, but you’ll need to do a little touching up and cleaning around the edges.

If you’re finding yourself stuck in drawing the continents on the egg, here is a helpful world map to reference that will help you on your way.

Map making is a romantic art, harkening back to an era of exciting new discoveries and mad adventure. Today, like many disciplines, cartography has developed roots tapping from its traditional design and craftsmanship into realms of modern technology and information gathering. It’s come a long way, and in the journey has picked up a vast array of cartographers with a thousand off-shooting interests.

In our search to remain connected to what people love about maps, we’ve come across five passionate blogs detailing those nooks and crannies of cartography that centuries of the art/science have created.

“The best playwright is a dead playwright”. Big Map Blog was created by a man who was desperately hunting for public domain maps and experienced immense difficulties reaching them through government websites. A modern day (legal) cartographic Robin Hood, ‘The King’ has extracted close to a thousand large format maps, free for the public to view and download. Now that’s passion.

At first glance, Radical Cartography looks like a blank page, populated by only a couple of links. Don’t be fooled, this site is a matryoshka doll of interesting maps, fueled by the complexity and beauty of human patterns. The projects are broken down by area (states, country, world), highlighting a variety of simulations ranging from demographic and housing patterns to more artistic abstractions of spatial connections. The beautiful part is that the cartography is crowd sourced, yet they all somehow weave together as if they were made by one person. Feeling adventurous? Add to the project!

Map making doesn’t have to be a lofty discipline – anybody should be able to do it, right? The creators of Making Maps seem to think so, and they’ve developed a DIY cartography resource blog to prove it. If you’ve ever been interested in dabbling in the world of map making but have been a bit intimidated by the scope of work and detail required to make it happen, take a look around. You may just discover the hidden cartographer in yourself. Make sure to check out their book, it is designed to pair with the blog.

Care to take a look under GIS giant Esri’s hood? Then mosey on over to their GeoIQ blog where they write about features of their work on big data analytics, open platforms, and open data. Explore what they’re up to and join the conversation as they cover all sorts of geospatial data visualization topics.

The Origami Globe

Christmas Geography Project for Teachers!

This one is a bit trickier than our decoupaged globe ornament and needs a bit more patience. However, it can be an excellent project to do with your budding geography buff and is perfect for the classroom!

What you’ll need:

Map [printable download]

How To Make a Paper Sphere [printable]

Scissors

4” Styrofoam Sphere

Pencil

Compass and Ruler

Ribbon & Bells (for a Christmas time flourish)

Step 1

The circumference of a 4” ball is roughly 13”. If you are making this for any other sized ball, you can measure the “equator” by wrapping a ribbon around the middle and measuring the feed. This map printable fits comfortably on an 11×17 sheet of paper.

Step 2

On a large piece of paper draw a rectangle the same length as the circumference of the ball. The height of the rectangle should be half the circumference of the ball. Draw an equator line through the center of the rectangle, lengthwise. Cut out the rectangle.

Step 3

Step 4

Cut out your gored paper. It should look like this. It is helpful in the case of gluing to create small tabs (seen on the bottom points) for connecting the pieces of paper together over the sphere.

Step 5

Wrap the gored paper around the circumference of your styrofoam ball and connect the ends with either tape or glue. Hang with a ribbon, connect some bells, and enjoy your little “world on a string” on your Christmas tree!

Christmas Decoration Idea: Map Ornament Design + Free Maps

The Decoupaged Globe Ornament

Not every Christmas hosts a traditional flair. These days, families find themselves scattered all over the globe. Rather than making that trip back to home base, it is becoming quite common for loved ones to pick a place on the map and celebrate the holidays in an entirely different setting. And why not? If everybody is flying somewhere anyway, what could be more fun than meeting up for a romantic family adventure in snowy Tahoe or (for the snow birds) sunny Malibu? Santa certainly keeps tabs on these kinds of things. He’s not the first to hear about the non-traditional Christmas.

In light of these Christmas time journeys, we’ve designed two map themed ornaments (see our Origami Globe Ornament) to help you and your family remember your travels. Don’t have an old map? That’s okay! As an added Christmas bonus, we are making our popular World Antique Wall Map 1595 and World Antique Wall Map 1664 free for download for the rest of the year. Click the images below to print your maps!

What you’ll need:

Step 1

Pierce the Styrofoam ball with a sturdy rod to create a passage from the top to the bottom. Decoupage can get messy. For a cleaner experience, hold the sphere on the rod during the glossing process. This is where the ribbon will feed into in later steps.

Step 2

We used a 4” Styrfoam ball specifically because the Old World Map download fits perfectly on an 11×17 sheet of paper. The circumference of a 4” ball is roughly 13”. If you are using a different sized ball, make sure to measure by wrapping a ribbon along the “equator”, and measuring it. That measurement should be the same size as the width of your map.

Step 3

Cut out the circular portions of the map (and save the lovely artwork for missteps and cover-ups). Cut along the yellow lines depicted here to produce 12 separate pieces.

Step 4

With your Mod Podge, paint directly onto the sphere, setting each piece of the map in its proper place. Paint on another coating after each piece has been set. Let dry for a couple hours. If you see any white spaces, use other pieces of the map to cover them up.

A bit nervous? Here are a couple links to help you get started decoupaging like a pro:

Although many people do not use maps for road trips anymore, many people still enjoy looking at maps of different places around the world. World maps are also a great learning tool for the classroom as all students may not have access to the internet at all times. For anyone wanting to purchase one of these maps, Maps.com has many world maps for sale in practically every form of map imaginable. For instance, some people may not want a specific map of a country but a map that displays all countries of the world. Maps.com will have these world maps for sale as well as maps that are country specific.

Century Maps
Maps.com has world maps for sale that are contemporary as well as antiquated. A great map for the classroom may be one that illustrates boundaries of countries in ancient times. Students can become actively engaged by comparing the boundaries of ancient Rome with their country boundaries of the present. This type of map will give both students and teachers alike hours of engaging visual learning.

Digital Maps
Maps.com also has digital world maps for sale. These maps can be used for those who want to print brochures, charts, and reports as well as feature a world map on his or her website. These are great for a business specializing in world travel and give the brochure or website a professional look and appeal.

Globes

Maps.com has world maps for sale in the form of traditional globes as well. Globes were once a staple in the classroom although they have generally been replaced with internet access. However, a globe can add style to any classroom, office, or board room giving everyone a sense of global inclusion. Globes can be a great decorative piece for the office as well.

Specialized Maps
There are other world maps for sale at Maps.com that are specialized. For instance, a great map for a boardroom may be one of the world maps that display time zones. This can be a great reference tool and be utilized even faster than a smart phone by simply looking up at the world time zone map without the typing and searching.

A map is a representation of geographic features of a given area of the world. They display the relationships between bodies of water and land masses. It is worth noting that the geographical representations come in more than 800 varieties. Many people are used to basic features such as plains, mountains, rivers, deserts, lakes and oceans. However, there is more than that accustomed thought.

New Century World Wall Map

The physical map of the world has a great impact on the world climate thus ultimately affecting lives of the people in different regions. This is the significance of understanding the map of the world. For example, people living in clod regions can comfortably withstand the adverse condition but may find difficulty in surviving in hot regions. Another significance of a world map is that it can help an individual to identify location of a particular place.

Map of the world is an essential resource that can be used to teach various subjects in learning institutions. Grade school subjects that have utilized the tools include history, languages and science. In history, the tool is used to reflect changes in every century. In language, it is used to represent population and distribution of various languages throughout the world. Finally, in science, the tool is helpful in demarcating mineral rich areas and seismic waves.

For centuries, the visual tools have been used to grace the desks and walls of homes and business premises. They indicate the latitudes and longitudes of every part of the world. Many people tend to identify the places they have paid a visit to by sticking a pin on them. This can help one to easily explain to another person the places that he or she has visited or where the business is located. One does not have to be an international tourist or businessman to appreciate the maps. One can enjoy watching beautiful oceans, lakes and rivers in the visual tools.

There are also maps that provide a wide range of happiness. For example maps that gives details about the geographical and tourist attraction sites of Costa Rica. There are about 800 of them that one can choose from. One is free to look for the most suitable one by using an internet.

Finally, a map can be a great gift to a loved one. There are high quality and suitable visual tools for one that loves to golf. They display golfing courts that are on the top notch in the world golf league.